Ola Electric has become the newest unicorn with a 250 million funding by Softbank to power its electric ambitions. In a move to further widen its lead over rival Uber in India the latest round of funding has led Ola electric to valuation of over 1 billion dollars.

Ola has been working on electric vehicles for several years and currently runs several two and three electric vehicles as a pilot programme in India. Ola’s electric ambitions are in sync with India’s ambition to curtail pollution and convert 40 per cent of its vehicle fleet to electric 2026.

Ola is also working on building charging infrastructure and swappable battery systems for these vehicles. The company has plans to bring 10,000 e-vehicles on the road by the end of the year.

Ola electric raised a 56-million-dollar funding last year which is sponsoring the current project. On the other hand parent group OLA raised 300 million dollar from Hyundai and Kia group a few months earlier to expand its mobility solutions. OLA has been rising fiercely in the last few years and has successfully expanded globally in countries like Australia, UK, and New Zealand.

Ola has also announced to build a new advanced technology centre in San Francisco and employ 150 engineers.

“As we think of the next decade, we want to invest in and we want to be very relevant on the global scale. We want to build cutting edge technology which impacts new age business model of the future,” CEO Bavish Agarwal was quoted saying in a press conference a few days ago.